


Wait by the Light of the Moon

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Marvel 616, New Avengers (Comics), Spider-Woman (Comic)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Minor appearance of Nick Fury, Minor appearances of various Skrull-replaced characters, Mostly Canon Compliant, New Avengers Vol. 1 (2004), Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SHIELD, Secret Invasion (Marvel), Skrulls - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23205901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: Jessica is having a hard time adjusting. To everything. Having her powers back, being on Earth, being a superhero, etc. If only she had someone to ground her.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Jessica Drew
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: Carol/Jess Mini Exchange 2020





	Wait by the Light of the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ironlawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/gifts).



> Title is from [Come to My Window](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk4CwPQCbAE) by Melissa Etheridge.

_**Then**_

“Okay,” Fury says, giving her a sharp nod. “Do it.”

Jessica tries to hide her surprise. She didn’t expect him to agree. Being a spy is complicated enough, but a triple agent? If she does this, Hydra will _know_ that she’s reporting to him, and somehow she’ll still need to convince Viper that she’s more loyal to her than to SHIELD.

It won’t be pleasant. She’s gotten used to the private eye life, having one foot in the world of flashy superheroes and slick superspies and another one in the “normal world” that she never knew until recently. Just being in the same room as some of these Hydra fuckers makes her nauseous, but if she can help hurt them the way they hurt her, then it might be worth it. She knows her reasoning should be more noble, that she should want to stop them because of their ideology and what they want to turn the world into, and that’s all well and true, but a good eighty percent of her hatred for the organization is more personal. What they turned her into, what they turned her father into. All the manipulations that led to the tragedy of the Drew family.

And she can’t deny that she misses some aspects of her powers. The superstrength and agility is nice, and there’s nothing that compares to the feeling of letting herself get caught up by a breeze and riding it all the way home.

—

_**Now**_

She can’t move. It’s cramped in here and her limbs feel weak. When she opens her eyes, all she can see is a red fog, like in the tank they had her in. Did they get her again? How—? When—? The last thing she remembers was eating microwave ramen in Captain America’s living room and leaving the cup on the coffee table. Was the window open?

She tries a venom blast, but only a feeble spark comes out. Is she losing her powers again? Damn it! She can’t go through this again. Jessica gathers all of her strength, both human and superhuman, and pushes as hard as she can against whatever resistance she can find. Something snaps, and then she’s awake in her bed in the Avengers hideout. Drenched in a cold sweat, heart racing at a gallop, but it's not real. She’s on Earth, safe. Among friends.

—

_**Then**_

An anesthesia mask is attached to her face, and she can hear the gas being ushered through it. A face peers down at her and says, “Count down from ten, please.”

Everything goes blurry, and she’s out before she reaches seven.

Jessica sleeps in a heavy, dreamless fog. Her mind is completely blank, and when she approaches consciousness again, she has no idea how much time has passed. Her eyes blink open, but she can’t see anything. She feels groggy, her limbs heavy.

Someone’s moving her. Her fingers try to grip the bed, but she can’t move—her wrists are restrained. Were they restrained when she went under? She doesn’t think so. Why would she be strapped down now?

“What’s—” Jess starts to say, but her voice is so weak that she can barely even hear herself. She coughs, trying to clear her throat.

Someone she can’t see says something sharply in a language she can’t understand—a language she’s never heard—and someone else responds to the first voice in kind. Jessica starts to panic. This is not what she and Viper had agreed on, not even close. Strangely, she feels a little indignant at Viper not keeping her word. Not that she ever thought Hydra had her best interests at mind, but she at least thought she and Viper had come to a place of honest, open dislike.

To be fair, Jess _was_ planning to betray her.

She tries to test out her powers, to see if they at least followed through on that part of the deal. Reaching deep inside herself, she finds the source of her venom blasts and tries one out. A small amount of energy fizzes out from her fingertips, not enough to cause damage. One of the voices around her shouts something, and Jess starts to thrash in panic, trying to loosen her restraints as she lets loose as much power as she can dig up.

It’s not enough. She can feel whatever drug they’re pumping into her as the dosage is turned up, and she goes under again.

—

_**Now**_

Jess looks around the bedroom. Carol is sleeping deeply on her air mattress, so Jessica’s nightmare didn’t wake her up again. She needs a drink of water, but she’ll no doubt trip over Wolverine or Spider-Man or someone on the way to the kitchen.

Air. That’s what she needs, Jess decides, as she catches sight of the window. She just needs to get outside, to breathe a little bit.

Carol sleeps like the dead—if the dead snored—but Jessica is still careful not to make any noise as she gets dressed. No costume—they’re technically fugitives from the law, and anyway, she’s not looking to attract attention tonight. She dresses in jeans and a gray hoodie, then climbs out the open window and down the side of the building, using her powers. When she gets to the sidewalk, she closes her eyes, tilts her head back, and inhales deeply.

This is so much better. Walking around anonymously, blending into the night. It’s late enough that the streets are practically empty, which is exactly the right level of solitude she was craving. She sometimes second-guesses her choice to take Logan up on his invitation to join the Avengers. They’re always watching her, trying to figure her out. Torn between treating her like a threat and acting as if they know her because of all the time they spent with that Skrull who posed as her. The expectations are suffocating, sometimes.

Maybe she should just keep walking. Disappear, change her name, start fresh.

Footsteps around the corner interrupt her thoughts. Two sets of feet, walking quickly, but not in sync. One person picks up the pace, and the other one follows.

A man’s voice: “What’s the matter? You in some kind of hurry?”

The footsteps speed up some more.

“See, now you’re hurting my feelings,” the guy continues. “I’m just being friendly, and you? You’re a woman out alone on the street. You could probably use a friend. I’m really a nice guy, if you give me a chance.”

Jessica approaches the corner silently, cursing internally. Street harassers, especially at this hour, are scum. This guy probably gets off on making women afraid. What if she hadn’t been here?

He’s talking again, but he doesn’t sound quite as genial anymore. “What, are you too good to talk to me? You think you’re above me, you stuck-up b—”

“Hi!” Jessica says, stepping out from the shadows and planting herself in between the woman and the harasser. “I hear you’re a nice guy." She grins menacingly at him, showing her teeth. "What a funny coincidence, because I’m a nice lady. Want to see?”

She pulls the hood off her head and points her hands at him, venom buzzing under her fingertips, but she doesn't get to use it. The second he gets a look at her face, his eyes widen and he pales.

“You’re _her_!” he gasps, and Jessica has a hunch he's not referring to Spider-Woman, famed Avenger. She’s _never_ going to be able to live down the association people have between her and the Skrull queen.

The guy turns heel and runs off. Which is kind of frustrating, because the crap out of him would have made her feel a lot better. She watches him go, then turns to see if the woman is all right, but she’s gone, too. No thank-you, no nothing. So that's what she gets for trying to be a superhero to an ungrateful society that sees her as a monster.

On the other hand, they don't do it for the accolades. At least, not at the moment. Norman Osborne is Nick Fury, up is down, bad is good, etc. If she gets caught saving someone's life, she could go to jail, and that's not even the worst case scenario. So maybe there's something to this “goodness is its own reward” thing.

She should get back before Carol wakes up and starts to worry.

—

_**Then**_

She hovers back and forth between consciousness and oblivion for months, unable to move or use her powers. During her more lucid periods, she wonders what the big picture is. It’s clear that Hydra double-crossed her, but why? She’s not being tortured, nor killed. Why restore her powers and then lock her away?

She wonders if Nick Fury is looking for her. He’s looked out for her before, and she trusts him, as much as she trusts anyone, anyway, which isn’t very much. So what’s taking him so long?

Maybe she deserves this. She’s done things, things she’s not proud of, while she still thought Hydra were the good guys. She should have known. And yeah, she’s done some good, too. SHIELD, superheroics...

A memory flashes before her eyes. A blond woman, falling from the Golden Gate Bridge. Jessica catching her a few meters above the water, saving her from death on impact. Carol Danvers.

The most meaningful thing she’s ever done. And those weeks she spent with Carol makes it all worth it, every rotten thing in her life that led up to those moments.

And then, finally, it happens. Jessica wakes up, all the way. She even opens her eyes, although she quickly winces and shuts them again at the harshness of seeing light again for the first time in who-knows-how-long. Instead, she uses her (unrestrained!) hands to try and get her bearings. She’s in some sort of cryogenic tank, surrounded by a red gas, and there are very muffled voices around her. Jessica reaches for her venom blasts again, and this time, it comes out full force. The glass around her shatters into tiny pieces, and sweet air rushes into her lungs.

She squints her eyes open. She’s inside some sort of room. There are other people in standing tanks, and some other broken tanks. On the far side of the room, two people are sitting and arguing, hunched over a screen. After looking around a little more, it becomes apparent that they’re on some sort of aircraft.

“Agent Drew?” says a voice next to her.

Jessica blinks and lets her eyes adjust as the face of Countess Valentina Allegra de Fontaine comes into focus.

“What’s going on?” Jessica asks. Her voice creaks after months of disuse, and she rubs her throat to massage some blood into the muscles.

Val tells her a fantastical story of being tricked by someone who looked just like Nick but then drugged her and shapeshifted into a green alien—a “Skrull,” she says—before abducting her. She was unconscious until a few minutes ago, too, and she doesn’t know how long ago this all was.

“Same happened to me,” says Dum-Dum Dugan, whom Jessica didn’t notice until he spoke. “I don’t know what they wanted us for, but the Skrulls have been hiding us away all this time. Probably stashed us on one of their outer planets.”

“Outer planets?” Jess repeats. She never even considered that she might not be on Earth. She looks all around to see if there are any windows, but they’re completely walled in. Even the area with the seats, which seems like it should be some sort of bridge or command center, has no panel to see out, just a screen with a chart.

A tank a few feet away explodes with a startling crash, and at first, it seems like it’s empty, but after a few seconds, Susan Storm-Richards, the Invisible Woman, flickers into view. She has her hands up, ready to attack. Her eyes focus on Jess, Val, and Dum-Dum, and she looks furious. “Where the hell have you taken me?” she demands.

“Not us, Mrs. Richards,” Dum-Dum says. “We got taken, just like you.”

“If you think I’m going to fall for _that_ one again, you’re even dumber than your name,” she says. “I mean, the name of the human you—”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Dum-Dum interrupts. “It’s really us, though. If we were Skrulls trying to fool you, wouldn’t we pick members of your family or something?”

She frowns. “That’s...a good point.”

The voices over from the bridge start to get louder. “Damn it! We’re missing something.”

“We’ve gone over it ten times. There’s no way into the system.”

“Who builds a ship with no way of controlling it? We _have_ to be missing something.”

Jess doesn’t know either of them that well, but she’s pretty sure those two are Mockingbird and Yellowjacket. Apparently trying unsuccessfully to override the ship’s controls.

Everyone who’s awake looks over at them, and the Invisible Woman asks, “Can you tell where we are?”

“We’re not far from Earth,” Yellowjacket answers. “That’s what’s so frustrating. We’re not quite close enough to be picked up by the standard detection systems, but if I could only move us closer...”

“This is insane,” Val says. “Is this some kind of psychological torture?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Invisible Woman grumbles. “But I think it goes deeper than that. The Skrull who captured me is someone who has a history with my family, but it didn’t seem personal.”

“How long have we all been here?” Jessica asks. She turns to Val and Dum-Dum. “Did they get you before or after me? Did Nick know I was gone?”

“Nobody knew,” Mockingbird cuts in. “They were replacing us so no one would be suspicious.”

“How do you know that?” asks a woman Jess doesn’t know. She’s wearing all red, and she speaks with a European accent that Jess can’t quite place.

A haunted look crosses Mockingbird’s face. “They didn’t sedate me.”

“They’ve taken over our lives.” Sue sounds horrified. “Who knows what kind of damage they’ve caused.”

“Any Skrull could probably run my life better than I do,” Hank mutters wistfully. Jessica thinks she can relate, but before she can say anything, he sees something on the screen in front of him and gasps. “We’re moving! We’re getting closer to Earth!”

“Thought you said it couldn’t be controlled,” Dum-Dum says.

“It’s not me. Someone must be controlling it remotely.” Yellowjacket frantically presses some buttons. “We’ll be inside the Earth’s atmosphere in under five minutes.”

Who’s bringing them in, though? Is it the Skrulls, as part of the next phase of their plan? Or are they being rescued?

The tension ramps up. They all gather around the screen, rapt even though most of them probably can’t interpret the chart. Jess certainly can’t, but she can’t take her eyes off of the moving dots.

“Something’s approaching,” Val says in a hushed tone.

There’s a scraping sound coming from one of the walls, and suddenly, the entire ship jerks. Most everyone goes flying; Jess’s powers keep her upright. They’re moving faster now.

“Better buckle up,” someone says.

And then they hit the ground.

—

_**Now**_

All the way back to Bucky’s, she can’t get the guy’s face out of her mind. He was a creep, that guy. A predator, but the way he looked at her was like _she_ was the thing that goes bump in the night. Is this her life now?

There’s no one else out tonight, and she makes it back without any further interruptions. Jessica crawls back up the wall of the building and slides in through the window she left open.

Carol is awake, sitting up on her mattress and facing her. “Oh, thank God,” she says as Jessica’s feet land on the carpet.

Well, at least someone is happy to see her. “Just went for a walk,” Jess says.

“I know,” Carol says. “I heard you leave. I just wasn’t sure if you were planning on coming back.”

Yeah, neither was she.

Jess takes off her sweatshirt and drops it on the floor next to her bed. She flops backward onto the bed and lets out a deep sigh. “You know, if I had somewhere else to go, then maybe. I just...I don’t feel at home anywhere in the world.”

“I know,” Carol says without judgment.

Jess looks over at her. Carol’s got her knees up in front of her, her arms folded on top of them, and she’s watching Jess, her expression somewhere between concern and curiosity.

Rolling onto her side, Jess picks her head up and asks, “Do you see her? When you look at me?”

“The Skrull queen?”

“No, Dorothy from _The Wizard of Oz_ ,” Jess deadpans. Carol cracks a grin, and Jess continues. “The others all do. They try not to, they’re not doing it on purpose, but in their subconscious...I’m her. She’s me. No one will ever look at me again without seeing her.” God, it’s depressing how much of her life is a result of somebody else’s manipulations.

Carol gives her an inscrutable look. She stands up and walks over, then sits down on Jessica’s bed, next to her head. “Jessica,” she says, “there’s nothing that could change what I see when I look at you.”

Jessica turns back onto her back and looks up at Carol. “And what’s that?”

“I remember falling,” Carol tells her. “I remember the weakness of my powers suddenly being stripped away, then falling. I was sure I was going to die.” Jessica winces, recalling the fear she’d felt for a stranger. “And then I was safe. And the first thing I saw, when I knew that I was safe, was this face.” Carol reaches down and cups Jessica’s cheek, a soft touch that wakes up feelings she hasn’t felt in a very long time. “And not only did you catch me, but you stayed. Though my recovery, through everything. That’s what I see when I look at you. You’re my hero, Jessica Drew, and you always will be.”

“ _Oh_.” She’s filled with warmth, starting from where Carol’s fingers touch her and expanding through her entire body. She turns her face toward Carol’s hand and grazes Carol’s fingers with her lips, and they let out twin groans. “Come here,” Jess whispers.

Carol leans in as Jessica reaches for her, setting her hand on Carol’s nape and pulling her in close. Their lips meet, and it’s soft and warm and affirming, one perfect moment in time. How is it possible that they never did this before? What were they thinking?

Carol pulls back, and she looks contemplative. “I’m sorry that you don’t feel at home anywhere.”

Jess quirks a smile. “Well, I think I could get used to this.”

Carol laughs. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” she admits.

“I’ve wanted _you_ for so long.”

Carol kisses her again, and their bodies curl around each other so that when they come up for air, they’re nestled together as if they’ve been like this all night. “Can I stay here tonight?” Carol asks.

Jessica pauses. She wants to say yes, but the nightmares... “I’m not the most restful sleeper,” she says.

“I’m ex-military,” Carol points out. “I’ve seen PTSD before. I can handle it.”

“Right.” Jessica pulls her closer, trying to melt into her. “I haven’t slept in a bed with someone in a very long time.”

Carol yawns. “Well, feel free to zap me if I hog the blanket.”

Jess laughs.

“Good night,” Carol says.

“Night.”

“And Jess?”

“Mmmm?”

“Thank you for coming back.”


End file.
